Toke Signals Stories of the Week

Rates of current and lifetime marijuana use among Colorado high school students has dropped since the state’s voters made marijuana legal in 2012, according to a Thursday press release from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

“Thirty-day marijuana use fell from 22 percent in 2011 to 20 percent in 2013, and lifetime use declined from 39 percent to 37 percent during the same two years,” according to the release. It has dropped nearly five points since 2009 (24.8 percent), when hundreds of medical marijuana stores began opening throughout Colorado.

The state began regulating medical marijuana in 2010. The CDPHE release says the drop from 2011 to 2013 is not statistically significant, but it appears the drop from 2009 to 2013 could be. In either case, it is clear that use among high school students has not increased.

The “stoned driving” laws that accompany recreational marijuana legalization in Colorado and Washington were sold to us as being necessary for public safety; the specter of stoned drivers was presented as something dangerous and potentially deadly. Many weed-hating cops were quite happy to find there’s still legal reason to arrest potheads. Reality, meanwhile, is telling another story, as highway fatalities in Colorado are nearing record lows since pot was legalized.

Marijuana opponents have darkly warned of a scourge of “high drivers,” but the fact is, we can only test for the presence of marijuana metabolites, not for being actually high on cannabis, reports Radley Balko at The Washington Post. Because everyone metabolizes marijuana (and other substances) differently, all a positive test tells us for sure is that the driver has smoked pot at some point in the past few days or weeks. (This reporter once tested positive for THC metabolites 63 days after last using marijuana.)

With the loosening of laws on marijuana, you’d naturally expect to see more pot use in the general population, including a higher percentage of drivers involved in fatal auto accidents who had used pot in the the past few days or weeks. You would, Balko points out, expect a similar result in any large group of people — but that doesn’t mean that marijuana caused — or was even a contributing factor — to accidents, traffic violations or highway fatalities.

Rep. John Mica (R-Florida), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Government Operations, claimed stronger federal laws against marijuana were needed in light of the wave of states legalizing cannabis for medical and recreational uses, reports Marina Fang at The Huffington Post. Rep. Mica made the remarks during a hearing entitled “Planes, Trains and Automobiles: Operating While Stoned.”

Rep. John Fleming (R-Louisiana) couldn’t resist joining in, attacking Colorado voters for their recent decision to legalize weed. Fleming pointed to a study by the University of Colorado at Denver purportedly showing an increase in traffic fatalities in the state since voters legalized medical marijuana, implying that further loosing the marijuana laws is dangerous.

The Washington, DC Board of Elections on Wednesday ruled that Initiative 71, an measure reforming DC’s marijuana laws, has enough valid signatures in order to qualify for the November ballot. One month ago, the DC Cannabis Campaign submitted 57,000 signatures, more than twice the number needed to qualify for the ballot.

According to an ACLU report released last year, Washington, DC has the highest arrest rate for marijuana possession in the country, with blacks more than 8 times as likely as white to be arrested, despite similar rates of use.

“It is clear from the number of signatures the campaign was able to submit that citizens want a major change in DC’s marijuana laws,” said Dr. Malik Burnett, DC policy manager for the Drug Policy Alliance. “The policies of prohibition in the District have been borne on the backs of people of color for decades; District residents can put an end to this discrimination.”

The Public Health Agency of Catalonia (a region of Spain) is drafting rules to regulate the cannabis sales associations which have become popular in the region. Cannabis clubs in Catalonia already have more than 165,000 members and take in about five million euros per month, according to published reports.

The ambitious proposal aims to regulate to entire process surrounding the cultivation and transportation of marijuana by cannabis clubs, and access requirements for members, reports Escofet Mumbru Jordi at El Pais Catalonia. One of the main rules is that cannabis club members can only be residents, to end the “cannabis tourism” that is increasingly popular in cities like Barcelona.

Cannabis club members will be required to be at least 21 years old. To regulate cultivation, the rules specify that cannabis production has to be provided upon prior request of partners, i.e., only marijuana which has previously been charged to a specific member may be planted.

A Tasmanian company has been given the go-ahead to grow, import and export medical marijuana on Norfolk Island, an external territory of Australia which is not part of Australia’s taxation or welfare system.

The island’s government has given permission to Tasman Health Cannabinoids (THC) to grow medicinal cannabis, with a view to it becoming a multi-billion dollar exporting industry, reports Airlie Ward at ABC News.

While Norfolk Island has historically struggled financially, and, like Tasmania, has been dependent upon assistance from Australia, the island’s Health Minister Robin Adams explained that they are ready to turn that around.

I guess it makes sense that bees don’t like buzzkills. Russian police suddenly found themselves in a “sting operation” on Tuesday when they were attacked by hundreds of angry bees as they attempted to destroy a marijuana plot close to Kostroma, northwest of Moscow. The officers fled in disorder from the scene.

It turns out that a number of bee hives were cleverly located in the middle of a plot of cannabis, reports RT.com. Many of the officers were stung repeatedly, but none reportedly suffered allergic reactions.

“As part of an operation, the police arrived at the scene to see whether rumors that a large amount of cannabis was growing were true,” said Valery Vekhov, one of the officers involved the the raid. “When we got to where the cannabis was growing, there were a number of beehives.

Toke Signals Must Read of the Week

With the increasing popularity of LED grow lights, manufacturers and distributors are innovating new ways to capture your attention. They like to lace genuine science with a healthy dose of marketing hype in hopes that you pause just long enough for them to dazzle you with the latest hyperbole. There are so many terms being thrown around, it can be difficult to dissect reality from marketing hype.

One of the common ways they try to get your attention is by talking about the light wavelength and spectrum used by their LED grow lights.

Here is a simple run-down of what is important and what isn’t to help your LED grow be all it can be.

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